Opinion
Season is evil in many ways
February 14, 2008
I don’t like you. I don’t like you one bit, Old Man Winter. You rolled into River Falls back in December, and it’s time you make like a tree and get the french toast out of my town.
You wore out your welcome quicker than a bum with a megaphone and a bad case of the Bloaties. I don’t care where you go after you leave; I don’t care if we ban you to a harsh life of vagrancy and exile. I just want you gone.
Every year you rear your rheumy head like an old, unwanted uncle that stays too long and takes all the hot water. Your wrinkly fingers carry in them a cold so arthritic and dry that my own young, supple hands resemble freezer-burned pastrami popsicles after just a few minutes in your whirling winds. You invade our homes with drafts that can cause the Bubonic Plague, or at least mild discomfort. I hate you.
You make things so damn inconvenient. I spend three hours a day cramming myself into the space suit I need just to survive your frigid touch.
You make me senselessly expend valued energy stepping over seas of salt-slush. You cover our cars with blankets of a substance we might as well rename “You’re-Gonna-Be-Late-Powder.” Well, I guess “snow” is noticeably less lame than my more accurate version. But you’re still a salty dog.
You’re a deceptive old con as well. How many times have your frozen puddles given way to hidden three-inch mires of muck hovering just above absolute zero? And not to mention the ice!
That damn ice can send Chevys careening off canyons or into oncoming semitrucks. It can cause minor yet embarrassing falls on the campus paths. How are the most hopeless of us to find love if we’re constantly crunching our skulls on that deadly, invisible killer ice? Stop ruining our hopes and dreams, you mean-hearted scalawag.
You’re pure crystalline evil. Your “pretty” flakes drop from the flaming sky like so many Nazi paratroopers bent on devastation. Sure, the girls think you’re beautiful. That only proves the extent of your spuriousness, the reach of your deceit.
Your knuckle-blistering, snot-freezing, lip-chapping, shoe-drenching, jean-staining, car-wrecking, love-stealing days are over.
If you keep it up any longer, I’ll be calling my homies at Halliburton, and they’ll call their homies in OPEC, and they’ll get this nasty wiseguy by the name of Global Warming to come in here and kick your ass back to the pole. You’re a goner, Wrinklecheeks.
And don’t think you can rely on your Ecofriends to swoop in and save the day—someday soon they’ll all recognize you for who you really are: a whole lot of blizzardy non sense that has no business in my town.
I used to like you. You used to be an alright guy. What happened? Who died and made you king of the douchebags? Justice is coming, my friend.
Old Man Winter, pack your suitcase and bust humps on down the road.
Maybe Eau Claire is looking for some hardship. Give ‘em all you got.
Joe Hager is a student at UW-River Falls.